Most conventional sockets have a driving end including engagement surfaces that engage a nut or bolt head to be torqued and also have a driven end with a square drive opening that receives a square drive tang of an associated wrench to provide the torquing. With this conventional construction, the socket must have a relatively long axial length in order to be capable of engaging a nut through which a threaded shank of a bolt or stud extends. Otherwise, the threaded shank will engage the interior of the socket and/or the wrench drive tang and thereby prevent engagement of the driven end of the socket with the nut for torquing. As such, it is conventional for complete socket sets to include both "shallow sockets" and "deep sockets". The shallow sockets can torque bolt heads or nuts which do not have a relatively long projecting threaded shank, and during the torquing permit the manual application of the torque to the wrench at a relatively close axial location to the engagement of the driving end of the socket with the bolt head or nut. On the other hand, deep sockets are capable of accommodating nuts with relatively long threaded shanks projecting therethrough even though the manual torque applied to the wrench is located at a more remote axial location from the location of engagement between the driving end of the socket and the nut.
Prior art references noted during an investigation conducted in connection with the present invention are discussed below.
U.S. Pat. No. 838,109 Hanes et al discloses a socket having an internal opening that receives a hollow drive tang of an associated ratchet wrench.
U.S. Pat. No. 845,717 Miller discloses a socket whose driven end while having a through hole does not have a sufficiently large size of the through hole so as to permit a threaded shank to be received thereby during torquing of a nut through which the threaded shank extends when considering the nominal relationship between nut and threaded shank sizes.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,447,564 Norlund et al discloses a key having a socket end including formed ribs such that the socket end can receive a specially designed grooved nut, and the key also has a polygonal end at which a wrench can be applied to torque the nut.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,532,012 Pryor discloses a chuck wrench that is utilized with a socket designed to permit adjustment of an adjusting nut of a clutch for a particular vehicle whose clutch has a threaded shaft and a jam nut associated witch the adjusting nut.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,877,328 Sullivan discloses an end wrench and socket with reducing inserts.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,520,697 Moetteli and 4,602,534 Moetteli disclose a socket wrench that is utilized with different size sockets whose driven ends have both female and male surfaces for being driven by an associated drive portion of the wrench which has both an external surface and an internal surface for respectively driving the sockets at the female and male drive surfaces.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,817,475 Kelly discloses a wrench socket which has a square drive opening extending through the socket but which is of too small a size to receive a threaded shank projecting through a nut driven by the socket and which is also blocked by a retaining pin so that the threaded shank could not extend therethrough even if this were possible as far as size is concerned.